


Rememorizing

by Honorable_mention



Series: Rememorizing [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clown Induced Amnesia, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Richie Tozier, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentioned Sonia Kaspbrak, POV Maggie Tozier, POV Outsider, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26490796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honorable_mention/pseuds/Honorable_mention
Summary: It all begins with a phone call, though that isn’t quiet true. It begins decades before, back when Maggie and Wentworth decided to move to Derry. And even after that Maggie knows something’s wrong when she suddenly remembers her son's friends. But it’s the phone call that sets it all off.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Maggie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier & Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier/Wentworth Tozier
Series: Rememorizing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943737
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56





	1. The Call

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by @millennialpink22‘s amazing story A Mother Knows Best. It’s great, especially the way she writes Maggie. The Toziers care about their son and that is final.

Maggie is laying in bed, staring at the ceiling with her hands over her face, when she remembers Richie’s friends. She sits straight up, her cheeks tingling and her old hands achy. Everything is fuzzy, cotton drops out of her nose, but she’s remembering them now. Beverly, Ben, Eddie. Eddie with the first aid kit and the neurotic rambling.

“Went,” she says, shaking her husband awake. He looks at her, his eyes squinting and red. His hand fumbles against the nightstand before he gives up and turns to her without his glasses, just his wayward hair clinging to his nose.

“What is it?” He waits for a response, that gentle look she’s loved for decades.

“It’s Richie,” she manages to mumble out. Went’s eyes get wide and she shakes her head. He relaxes and edges closer to her on the bed. Went loves Richie, but he also knows that if anything happened to their son Maggie would be the first to know.

“He’s okay then?” 

“Yeah, he’s okay. But Went, I don’t know how to explain it, but he had friends. Back when we lived in Maine he had a whole group of friends and we forgot about them.”

Went sits up next to her in bed, both of their spines pressed rigid against the headboard. Her husband starts and stops half a dozen sentences but can’t seem to form a full thought.

“So you remember them too?” Maggie asks and he nods, rubbing his temple. It’s a bad habit, and she used to say it aged him beyond his years. He’d just laugh and do it more and she couldn’t help but laugh too.

Sometimes one of Richie’s friends would join in their teasing, and Maggie never knew whether to be flattered or concerned. How had she forgotten that?

“How could we have forgotten them?” he mutters and she wipes his hair out of his face. His cheeks are pulled in tight with thought.

Maggie shrugs as the memories come flooding back to her. Catching Bev smoking and feeling an anxious knot catch in her chest. Letting Stan borrow her books with a half-hearted promise to return them, though he never did. Letting Eddie stay over when his mother became too much. Pretending she didn’t know what was going on between him and her son.

“What should we do?” Went looked at her, an anxiety bordering on terror she didn’t see very often lighting its way across his face.

“We should,” she began. But she didn’t know what to do. Nothing could have prepared her for this, for realizing she remembered nothing about where she’d raised her son. How she’d raised him, the people they’d kept close. “We should sleep now and call Richie in the morning.”

“But this doesn’t have anything to do with him,” Went whispers. “I don’t know what happened, why we forgot, but that’s our fault.”

“We’re just getting old. That’s what’s happening,” Maggie says. She slides back down into the bed next to Went. Her pillow is rough against her cheek and her thighs chafe under the thick blanket. They hadn’t done that before, or maybe she’d just forgotten what they felt like.

“But doesn’t that happen slowly? Forgetting in your old age?”

Maggie wraps her arms around her husband’s shoulders and feels his steady breath. In and out, his chest and his loose skin moving in unison. “Maybe we’ve forgotten more. We’ll just call Richie in the morning. He’ll know.”

Maggie sits at the kitchen counter and sips her coffee. It’s just past lukewarm and dark as night, just the way Richie hates it. He always complains about her coffee taste whenever he’s over, mocking her while simultaneously chugging some sugary nonsense hot enough to burn his throat. 

She puts her cup down and runs her hand over the counter. It’s a kitchen island Richie got them as an anniversary present last year, necessary after he collapsed their last table while trying to kill a fly.

“Thinking about Richie?” Went asks as he places a gooey-hot raspberry muffin in front of her.

“I’m trying not to, but we should really just call him. There’s no harm in doing it.” She picks the wrapper away from the muffin and pinches a section between her fingers. The steam burns the edges of her thumb but she still places it on her sensitive tongue.

“He’s visiting his friends, we should leave him alone.”

“He’s visiting the friends we didn’t remember until yesterday. It can’t be a coincidence. I don’t believe it.”

“Yes, but what’s the alternative? Magic?” He sighs and places a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be dismissive. I’ve been feeling it too, this weird presence around his friends. I can’t describe it.”

“We should call him,” Maggie says with a nod. 

“At worst he can tell off for our old person nonsense.”

“Yeah.” She laughs, “that’s what he does every time he talks to us anyway.”

She should just call him. All day she and Went have been lying around the house, watching old movie musicals and bringing up old memories when the past strikes them between the eyes like a dart.

Maggie had pulled up Richie’s number on her phone, hovered her finger above the call button, but she hadn’t been able to do it, to actually talk to him.

She doesn't understand why this is so difficult. Richie talks to her everyday after dinner (her time), sometimes more or less but never going three or four days without talking to her. She loves hearing his voice and listening to him spin tales about the mysterious stranger in the audience or the couple across the plane from him.

So why is this so hard?

They’re halfway through a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie when she feels her phone buzzing against her leg. She looks at the name before tapping Went in the leg.

“Turn off the television, Richie’s calling.” Went springs into action and goes searching for the remote. His hand reaches between two floral cushions and pulls it out. Maggie puts her finger over her lips and gestures for him to quiet down.

“Richie?” She tries to sound nonchalant, like she’s normal and fine and calm.

“Hey mom,” he says. His voice is watery and thin and she can tell he’s been crying. She wishes she could be there, that she could climb through the sound waves and wrap him in a crushing hug.

“What’s wrong?” she finally asks.

“I can’t, I don’t think I can explain. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you come out here to Maine? I need you right now.” There is a sound through the phone and she realizes he has stifled another burst of tears into a hiccup.

“Of course Richie. Me and your father will be out there as soon as possible,” she says into the phone. She can imagine his red-rimmed eyes all those miles away. “We’re retired, what else did we have to do?”

He laughs with the conviction of a frightening puppy. “I guess I’ll see you soon,” he whispers. There’s another hiccup. “I’ll explain when you get here. I love you.”

“I love you too, Richie.”

And with that he hangs up.


	2. The Arrival

The airplane is stuffy and the air is stale. Maggie can’t stop rocking her leg up and down, up and down. Rhythmic, even, calming. The poor woman next to her looks like she’s a moment from asking Maggie to stop, but the rules of etiquette are holding her back. Maggie doesn’t care. She grips Went’s hand where he rests against the plane window and she tries not to worry about Richie more than she has to. He’s alive, she knows that, and she’ll cling onto that ray of light like it’s the raft of the Medusa.

At the airport it takes her a moment to recognize the woman picking them up. She’s much taller then she used to be, and her hair looks different. It’s Bev, all grown up.

“Mrs. Tozier,” she says, her voice cracking like a thousand lost memories are flooding back to her. But maybe Maggie’s projecting that image onto the woman as memory after memory comes jamming its way into her mind.

“Please, call me Maggie,” she replies as she helps Went load their luggage into the trunk of the rental car.

Maggie takes the front seat, next to Bev, and Went dozes in the back seat. It’s late, the road quiet and dark, and the whole earth seems still. Holding its breath.

At first she doesn’t know what to say. How can she start this conversation, how can she pick up the threads tossed aside decades before?

Bev fiddles with the radio. It’s playing something soft, the end of a song Maggie remembers Richie listening to in high school.

“Richie’s okay, right?” she finally manages to push out.

Bev nods. “He’s okay. But, um, it’s Eddie. He’s in the hospital.”

“Oh.” Maggie runs her finger along the window of the car. She has so many questions but they all seem so silly out here in the cold expanse of the Maine countryside. “Is he okay? Eddie?”

“He’s not doing great, no, but he’ll live. Richie’s been by his side but I think he needs you both here. We’re trying to help but there’s only so much we can do.” She sighs and drums her fingers on the steering wheel. Maggie notices bruises on her hands but doesn’t comment. She doesn’t want to know how they got there. “We just missed so much of his life. Of all of each other’s lives.”

“You forgot, didn’t you?” Maggie asks and Bev nods. “He forgot too. I forgot. It was nothing, and then suddenly all of you were here again in my mind.”

The road is straight and narrow up ahead. They haven’t passed another car in miles. “I guess you deserve an explanation, Mrs. Tozier. Maggie.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me, not if you don’t want to.”

“You flew all this way. You should know what happened.”

“I really don’t need to know. I understand that whatever happened was difficult for you all, and I don’t need you to hurt yourself more for my benefit.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” The radio announcer says they’ll be counting down some top ten list, but Maggie’s only half-listening. “It’s really good to see you, Bev.”

“It’s good to see you too.”

Bev tells them they can leave their bags in the car and Maggie taps Went’s shoulder to wake him up. He rubs his sleepy eyes and follows her as she leads him into the hospital.

It smells like disinfectant and lemon, and it reminds her of memories she can’t quite grasp in the foggy recesses of her mind. Bev says something to the receptionist that Maggie doesn’t catch, and then they’re being led into a back hallway. 

The hospital is sleepy and half-empty. She remembers what it used to be like when she lived here, bustling and thrumming with the footsteps of the town, but they built a county hospital and people moved away, and now the hall around Eddie’s room can be covered with people and no one’s dodging the sprawling legs.

Just like with Bev it takes her a moment to recognize all of them. But once she does she can’t look away. She wants to catalogue every stretch and wrinkle in their faces and match them with the pictures forming of their childhoods. 

Bev sits Maggie and Went down in acrylic red chairs and goes off to talk to the man who must be Ben. Everyone seems weary of Maggie and Went, hovering near them but not close enough to touch.

She watches the clock chase itself and wonders where Richie is. 

Another moment passes and then the door opens and Richie comes tumbling out. He looks just like he did the last time they saw each other, but there’s something different about him too. It hurts her to look at.

“Hey mom,” he says, tears staining his face. She wraps him in her arms, even though she towers over him, and lets him rest his head on her shoulder.

“I’m here Richie, we’re both here for you.”

“God, mom, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Start small. Right now. Is Eddie okay?”

“I don’t know, mom, I don’t know. He’ll live, they didn’t know if he would live or not, but they told me today he’d live. He might not ever walk again. They told me he might not be the same after what happened. And mom, what if that doesn’t matter because I never knew him in the first place?”

“You knew him, once, and you probably don’t know him now. That’s okay, because it just means you get to know him all over again. Even if he’s different, I know you two. You’ll make your way back together, one way or another.”

“It’s selfish, isn’t it, to be thinking about myself in a time like this?”

“What do you want me to say, Richie? I know I can’t convince you not to think like that. But you’re not selfish, and I’m here for you. I want you to remember that you need support too. From me, from your father, from your friends. Okay?” 

Richie nods and wipes his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t eaten in days and maybe that’s the case. She can just imagine the way he’d look, a sentry at Eddie’s bedside, not sleeping or eating or moving until the doctors worried for his life too.

“Now, what do you want from me and your father?”

“Can you let me keep hugging you? Please?”

“Of course Richie,” she says, feeling his face pressed against her shoulder, “of course I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bev’s here! And I also continue my tradition of writing super short chapters


	3. The Awakening

When Maggie looks at Eddie’s wife she can’t help but see Sonia. They’re different women, she knows, and it’s bad to compare them. It’s been decades, Sonia might be dead. Never compare the living to the dead, Maggie’s mother always used to say, it makes the dead self-conscious.

But the similarities are all right there. They hold themselves the same way, self-conscious, lashing out at anyone who dares to suggest that they are fallible. But Myra’s more anxious than Sonia was, and Maggie would bet she’s less aware of what she’s doing. Her place is certainly less secure, if Maggie remembers anything from her son’s childhood. Now that the memories are back it’s hard to ignore.

Maybe Maggie’s just being cruel. She barely knows this woman. 

“I’m just so worried about him. He’s always been fragile, not that it’s his fault, but this is just so terrible,” Myra says as she stares down into her coffee. They’re sitting in the hospital cafeteria. It’s the middle of the day and the sun streams through the open windows. People mill around them, nurses on break and other nervous families, and the food isn’t good. “I’m so worried, Maggie. I don’t know what I would do if he were gone.”

“He’ll be okay.” Maggie takes her hand. She can tell that Myra and Eddie’s relationship isn’t healthy, but she still feels bad for the woman. Myra’s clearly uncomfortable around Eddie’s friends, and deep down she must know that Eddie will be different when he wakes up. They all do. Maggie doesn’t know how he’ll be different, doesn’t know what he’ll do when he wakes up, but there’s a crackling knowledge among the people at his door that something big when he finally opens his eyes.

“But how do you know? How can any of us know?” Myra asks, her hands pulling on each other.   


“You heard the doctor, he’ll live.”

“But he was always so fragile,” she mutters.

“Did Eddie ever tell you about the summer he broke his arm?” Myra shakes her head and runs her finger around the rim of her cup. “They were thirteen and it was hot. Summer. One day all the kids, that whole group you met, they were riding around on their bikes and they came back home with Eddie’s arm broken in more places than I cared to count. His mother rushed him to the hospital and tried to keep him inside, but Eddie wasn’t going to have any of it.” Maggie almost laughs, thinking about the kid Went once described as a neurotic, half-homicidal garden gnome. “Richie talked about it for months after it happened, away from Eddie so he wouldn’t hear, but Richie said that Eddie didn’t let something as stupid as a broken limb stop him. He wanted to get out there. He wanted to run around.” Maggie puts her hand on Myra’s arm and gives her a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Eddie’s a fighter. He’ll be okay.”

“Do you promise?”

“As close as I can get.”   
  
“Thank you,” Myra says. “I think I’m going to go upstairs and wait with Eddie again.”   
  
“How about we sit here a moment longer? I think Richie could use another minute with him.” Myra seems to think for a moment, almost getting out of her chair before she sits back down.

“Okay.” Myra drums her fingers on the table. “You don’t think I’m like Eddie’s mother, do you?”   


“What? Why would you ask that?”

“I was talking to William, arguing I guess, and he got so angry at me that he shouted that I was a clone of Sonia. But that’s not true, we’re completely different. She was awful to him, made him feel so terrible, and that’s not what I want to do. I just want to help him.”

Maggie thinks for a moment, deciding how to answer. “That’s what Sonia wanted too. She wanted to help him.”   
  
“But she did it wrong,” Myra nearly shouts before she composes herself. She rubs the back of her neck and avoids Maggie’s eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”   
  
“It’s okay. But, well, just because you think you have someone’s best interests at heart doesn’t mean you do. You don’t have to hurt someone on purpose to hurt them.”   
  
“But I love him,” Myra whispers.

“And I don’t know your relationship. I haven’t seen it. But, I just want you to keep in mind, you have to let the other person love you. If they’re only there because you want them there, not because they want to stay, then maybe everyone would be happier apart.”   
  
Myra finishes her coffee. “You’ve never seen us together.”   
  
“No, I haven’t.”   
  
Myra stands up and throws her coffee away. “I’m going back upstairs to see Eddie.”

Maggie is absorbed in a novel when Eddie wakes up. She doesn’t learn about it for several minutes, until Richie comes stumbling out of Eddie’s room.

“Mom, he’s awake.” He pulls Maggie into a hug.

She looks at her son and sees the color his cheeks have been missing. “How is he?”

“He said his body hurt like a bitch, and then complained that the sheets hadn’t been washed enough, so I think he’s okay.”

“I’m so happy, Richie.”   
  
“Me too,” he says, wiping a tear from his eyes. “I already told the rest of the group, but we’re letting him and his wife have a moment alone.” They haven’t discussed that yet, the fact that Eddie’s married, but she doesn’t think this is the best time to have that conversation. “I, um, I think I’m going to go talk to Eddie again.”   
  
“Of course. I love you, and I’m so glad that Eddie’s awake.”   
  
“I love you too. And, yeah. So am I.”

Maggie finds Myra in the little garden behind the hospital. She’s smoking a cigarette, but she grinds it out as soon as she sees Maggie approach. She looks ashamed, and Maggie remembers the way Richie looked when she caught him and Bev smoking behind their garage. He still does it, sometimes, hiding it behind his back and swearing up and down that he hasn’t picked up the habit again.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Maggie says. She only came outside to have a second of fresh air. The breath inside the hospital is too circulated, and she missed the freshness of Maine.

“Neither did I,” Myra replies. They stand there for a moment. The sun has just set and the light is nearly gone. It’s just the stars and the bright fluorescents of the hospital around them. 

“I would have expected you to be the type to stay indoors, by Eddie’s bedside.” 

Myra shrugs. “I saw the way he looked at your son. He never looked at me like that. Like he was so happy to see him, like he was so comfortable. And, god,” she kicks her foot on the ground, “I think I saw this coming. Back in New York I thought he was cheating on me, but I don't think he was. I just think a part of him remembered Richie. He wanted to come back here.”

Maggie watches Myra. She can imagine the way their relationship played out and she knows that neither of them were happy. “What do you think you’re going to do?”   
  
“Stay here, I guess. I don’t know. There’s nothing for me back home, but I don’t think he’s going to want to stay with me after he’s discharged. We’ll just have to see, right?”   
  
“Yeah, we’ll just have to see.”   
  
Myra laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”   
  
“I’ve been told I’m approachable.” A creature scurries through one of the bushes next to them. They both ignore it. “I think I’m going to go inside, if that’s alright.”   
  
“Of course, yeah. Bye,” Myra says, and Maggie walks away. She steals a glance over her shoulder before she walks back into the hospital. Myra is lighting another cigarette beneath the blanket of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Myra was a really interesting character to write, and I hope that my interpretation of her is okay. There's just a lot of interesting aspects of her character that I couldn't help but explore (and might do more later? But probably not lol)


	4. The Visit

Eddie doesn’t leave the hospital for a month. The injuries he sustained aren’t the kind of thing you heal from overnight. 

Maggie and Went leave after a week. Eddie and Richie’s friends leave a week later. All of them want to stay, but they have lives they have to get back to. They have jobs, they have appointments, they have other families. 

Richie helps Eddie pack when they leave the hospital. They drive to the airport together.

Maggie doesn’t know what happened, exactly, but Myra didn’t leave the hospital with her husband. Richie had called the night it happened to tell his parents that Myra was on a plane back to New York, but that she wasn’t angry enough to contest the divorce. Of course he could have only said that to ease their anxieties, but her son had never been the kind of man to lie to his mother.

Everything Maggie knows about what happened at the airport or at the hospital after she left is hearsay. Her only source is Richie, and he isn’t exactly the pinnacle of being unbiased. But, according to Richie, Eddie hadn’t said anything about getting on a plane to California until they got to the airport. The only reason he even brought it up was because he needed to make sure Richie was going to let him stay at his apartment. Richie told him it might not be clean enough, what with the lack of cleaning in a month and the fact that Richie lived there, but Eddie swore it would be fine.

On the plane Eddie hit the knees of the woman sitting next to him “on accident” with his cane until she switched seats with Richie, and they spent the next few hours bickering like teenagers. Maggie pitied the other passengers and whichever poor flight attendant had been assigned to their row.

They’ve now been living together for about six months, with no real acknowledgement about the status of their relationship. Maggie and Went have been keeping up with their son’s friends, and apparently Richie and Eddie haven’t said anything to them either. They all have their suspicions, of course, but they don’t want to scare the pair off by voicing them. Maybe they’re just friends. Just the kind of friendship where one friend suddenly gets the desire to get divorced from their wife of many years after seeing his other friend for the first time in a decade and a half. That kind of friendship.

Eddie picks them up from the airport. Maggie isn’t sure whether or not he should be driving, but he seems safe enough. Terrifying, loud, angry, but that’s standard Eddie. He still has a cane when he walks but Eddie Kaspbrak was never the kind of person to let a silly thing like being impaled keep him from living his life.

Richie’s apartment, though it really isn’t his anymore, is much neater than the last time they visited. All of his books are on a shelf, the dead plant in the corner has been replaced and moved next to a window. There’s an actual bed in the guest room, rather than a fold-out couch older than Maggie’s mother that Richie says is bad for his back. Said, because it’s probably been thrown to the curb, the place it should have lived decades ago and where Richie probably originally found it.

It’s tasteful. The apartment is tasteful and it’s a welcome change. Eddie lets them in while grumbling about the door’s locking mechanism and water damage.

The apartment building they live in is nice, though the years have taken their toll and it can be loud at night when everyone’s back from work. It’s not the place you’d expect a B-list actor and a successful risk analyst to live if you didn’t know them. But Maggie does know them, and she understands that this building is perfect for them.

After Eddie drops Maggie and Went’s bags off in the guest room they all head back into the living room and kitchen. Richie’s pulling something savory out of the oven and Eddie tells him to wait a moment before he puts it on the plates. Richie laughs and refuses to let it cool. All four plates are steaming hot when he sets them down. Richie and Eddie sit across from Maggie and Went and dine with nice silverware and novelty Star Wars plates. She pretends not to notice the two full nightstands through the door of the bedroom.

Dinner is good and she’s glad she’s getting to see Richie and Eddie again. They’re so comfortable with each other, the way they punch each other in the arm with grins on their faces when they say something particularly stupid, the way they’re practically in each other’s laps when they settle down to watch the first episode of Richie’s newest show. 

That night Went and Eddie go to bed early, Eddie because he has work in the morning and Went because he’s one of those men who sleeps more with age. Richie and Maggie pour small glasses of red wine and sit on the one-foot-wide porch. They can’t see any stars and the honking of cars fills the air. It’s peaceful.

“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you. About Eddie,” her son says, taking a sip of his wine and tapping his fingers along his leg.

She smiles at him. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He keeps tapping his leg. “I guess I’ve known it for a while. So have you, I think, but don’t tell me you already knew. Let me think this is a new revelation.” Richie takes a breath. “Mom, I’m gay. And I’m dating Eddie.”

“Oh.” She’d known, but at this point she’d sort of suspected that Richie was never going to come out to her. Suddenly she realized he looks so nervous he’s ready to vomit off the side of the balcony, so she says the only thing she can think of to say. “I’m really proud of you.”

“God, you had me nervous there for a second,” he says with a laugh, but she notices the little tears in his eyes as he stands up and hugs her. It’s awkward in the little space, him clutching onto her side, but it’s good. They stay like that a moment.

“I’m glad you and Eddie found each other again.”

“So am I.”

There’s so much more that needs to be said, but there will be other times for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason this tiny little 1k word chapter took me forever to write? I don’t know either


	5. The Reacquaintance

Maggie likes Eddie. Of course she does, she has to like anyone that makes Richie that happy, but they’ve never spent much time together. They’re always with Went or Richie or one of her son’s friends. But a woman should know her son’s fiancé beyond what he was like as a teenager, and damn if she isn’t taking Eddie out for a night on the town.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to realize that neither of them are particularly keen on the concept of going out, especially not at night. Eddie’s a not-so-secret homebody and Maggie isn’t too vain to admit she’s getting old. Her shaky hands and veiny wrists won’t let her forget it.

They’ve ended up spending the afternoon together. Eddie wants to see a photography exhibit at a museum near their apartment. It’s some contemporary artist he’s fascinated by, someone he apparently keeps Richie up at night talking about, and she and Eddie set off down the street. They’re smartly for the weather and each equipped with a bag ready to patch any wounds or deal with any task that may arise. Went and Richie go away to do, as Eddie describes it, gremlin behavior. She has no idea what that entails.

On the way to the museum Eddie pulls her into an ice cream store. It’s half below the street level, tucked away under a green awning, but it’s bright inside. Eddie lets her look at the flavors in the case below them for a minute. There are so many choices spread out before her, swirls and fruits and every variation of chocolate under the sun.

She can’t decide what to order so she lets Eddie decide. He gets her Richie’s favorite flavor and orders himself some sort of sugar and dairy free sorbet. 

Her bones may creak when it’s humid, but she’s not too old to admit that a hearty serving of marshmallow, peanut butter, and chocolate is delicious. She understands why Richie loves it.

She’s happy when they get back out to the street, both because of the food and because she knows she’s learned something new about Eddie. The little Kaspbrak she knew never would have done something as spontaneous as that.

“That was nice,” she says, “just doing something without planning it.”

“You sound like Richie,” he laughs.

“Is that a compliment?”

“You get to decide.” They take a few more steps and Maggie watches the withering plants in the sidewalk cracks. “But it is good. My therapist said I should try doing more things like that, things that I don’t calculate the risks for. And to enjoy food, not see it as a reward or a chore. But apparently that’s a related but not exactly the same problem”

“You’re seeing a therapist Eddie? That’s really good.”

“It is. I like her. She’s got amazing hair.”

“How does it compare to that perm I had for a year in the eighties?” She pretends to fluff her hair.

“On a scale of one to that? A solid eight.”

“Very good. I’m proud,” she says.

“But she’s nice, my therapist. Richie recommended talking to someone after the, you know,” he gestured at his chest. “And it’s been helping. It’s good.”

“I’m so happy to hear that Eddie. I really am.”

They get to the door of the museum. It’s a small building, old and tucked between two new developments. The stone is heavy, solid in that true nineteenth century style. There aren’t as many buildings out here like that, almost none in the grand scheme of things, and it’s nice.

Eddie lets her in and she’s hit by a cold wave of air conditioning. Inside it’s sleek and paired down. Very tasteful. It’s white and red and there’s a display on one wall of a set of wood carvings wedged between ceramic plates. Eddie seems enthralled so she lets him gaze a moment before she pulls him toward the ticket counter.

There’s no one here on a Tuesday afternoon except the young woman at the desk and the bored security guard hovering a few feet from the first floor.

Maggie goes to grab her wallet but Eddie shoes her away. “Mom, I’ve got this. It’s on me.”

He purchases the tickets and they each get a sticker letting anyone who sees them know they paid to be here. The woman at the desk tells them how to get to the elevator and lets them know that the exhibits progress down from the highest floor to the lowest floor.

They’re a few feet from the desk when Maggie realizes what Eddie said.

“Did you call me Mom?”

“Of course not,” he says with a laugh, pushing the up button of the elevator and tapping his foot on the cool stone floor as they wait.

“No, you definitely said that. You called me Mom, and then you said you were going to pay for our tickets.”

“I wouldn’t,” he pauses for a moment before a crushing look of horror sweeps over his face. “Oh my god, Mrs. Tozier, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that, I promise it wasn't on purpose.”

“Eddie, honey, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. No one chooses to be that awkward.” He seems a little hurt by her words, but not enough that she cares to do anything about it.

“It’s not that I see you as a mother figure.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did. You can call me Mom if you want.”

They step on the elevator. It’s small and it crackles, and she can see Eddie calculating the likelihood that they’ll die before the doors open again on the sixth floor. She can see a cacophony of thoughts sprinting around his skull. “You’re not my mother though, Maggie.”

“I should hope not. Sonia was, well,” Maggie isn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

“You can say she was an abusive asshole. I’ve gotten far enough into therapy that I’ve moved past denial into anger.”

“Well that’s good.”

The elevator doors ding open and they step out. The exhibit is bright, photographs dotting the walls. Eddie races off to fawn over something she’ll let him explain to her later.

In the late afternoon, before they go back to the apartment, they each get a cup of fancy tea at the coffee shop down the street from the museum.

“You know, I wouldn’t mind if you called me Mom. You and Richie are going to get married, it isn’t too weird to call your mother-in-law that. If it makes you comfortable or happy or anything.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m always going to have a complicated relationship with that word, Mom, but maybe it would be good to have a positive association. Break it away from Sonia a bit.”

“It’s up to you.”

He takes a sip of his tea. Contemplates. She watches her own tea leaves settle into the bottom of the cup and wonders what they’d say if she knew how to read them and if she believed in that kind of thing.

“I don’t think I like it. I’d rather just call you Maggie, and we can together understand the weird complexities of our relationship.”

“It’s a deal.” She sticks her hand out and he shakes it with a smile.

“Now, Maggie, are you ready to go see what sort of nonsense Richie and Went got into today?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“So not ready at all?”

“Not ready at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided to turn this into a series! So if you want to stick around for that I’d love to have y’all.
> 
> Also, I know I’m bad at replying to comments but they really do mean a lot to me


	6. The Conclusion

It’s Christmas and Eddie and Richie are visiting from California. Richie’s only just arrived at their house and he’s already covered up in six extra layers, complaining about the snow like he didn’t grow up in Maine and trying to get Went to help him make hot chocolate. It doesn’t matter how old or how many of them there are, because every single time Went ends up relenting and they go inside to spray cocoa powder and sugar all over the counters.

She and Eddie stand outside a moment longer, enjoying the twinkling lights as they shine off the fresh afternoon’s snow, bright against the setting sun. The downpour has slowed for a moment so only a couple snowflakes manage to fall through the air, and the tableau is dreamy.

“We should probably go in and help,” Maggie says, rubbing her gloved hands together as the cold nips her exposed wrists.

“They don’t need it,” Eddie replies. She gives him a look and he laughs. “I’m serious. Richie’s a shockingly good cook.”

“It is surprising, isn’t it?”

He nods. “When I moved in I was expecting ramen and microwaved fish sticks every day, but the first day I’m there he plops me down, runs to the store, and makes homemade Mac and cheese.”

“Not even from a box?”

“No! And I’m just sitting there, waiting to be poisoned, and it’s actually delicious. And by that point I’m starting to worry about the carbs and the fats, as one does.”

“Of course,” she replies, opening the bright red front door and leading Eddie into the living room. She can hear Richie and Went banging more pots and pans than they’ll ever need in the kitchen.

“Right, so I’m worrying about the calories and Richie starts telling me all the changes he made to the recipe to make it healthier. And then he made fun of my diet and my health, but it was actually sweet.” He sits down on the blue couch, the good one, and places his cane against the coffee table. “Don’t tell him I said that, it’ll go to his head.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

At that moment Richie and Went come into the kitchen with a tray of five hot chocolate mugs. Went settles down in his chair and Richie gives everyone a mug before leaning against Eddie and sipping from both of his mugs at the same time. When he notices Eddie isn’t drinking he says something to him, too quiet for Maggie to make out. After a second of deliberation Eddie takes a sip.

“How is it?” Richie asks, and everyone says it’s good. Even Eddie, and Maggie’s not sure if she’s ever seen him eat more than three grams of sugar in one sitting in his adulthood.

“It’s very nice for you to make it. But why, exactly, do you have two mugs?” Maggie understands she must be missing something, because no one else seemed ready to bring it up.

“Oh, these?” He holds them up.

“What else would I be talking about?”

“Right, of course.” He takes another sip. “Well I wanted to try putting chili powder in my hot chocolate, and it’s really good, but it’s also way too spicy for me because I have the spice tolerant of a toddler who’s only eaten chicken nuggets. So logically I had to get a second mug and switch between them to get back to a level of spice I can handle.”

“You know, if it didn’t work the first time you really need to stop doing it.” Eddie isn’t really reprimanding him, just setting up the punchline to a joke that won’t ever get told because that would ruin its power.

With that they settle into a rhythm. They finish their hot chocolate and pick through the sugar cookies she made earlier in the week. They even sample some of Eddie’s homemade peanut brittle, though they all mutually agree that the cooking should be left to the Toziers. Richie picks out a Christmas movie, though Eddie insists that Die Hard isn’t really seasonal. That begins an argument about whether or not Die Hard can be considered a movie with themes of family, and whether Christmas movies really need to have some cheesy story about family, and soon they’ve tired themselves out so much that Richie misses half of the movie, asleep on Eddie’s shoulder.

They look comfortable like that and it makes Maggie’s heart bubble. Richie looks really and truly calm, asleep as Eddie plays with his hair.

Maggie always wanted her son to be happy. She wanted it deeply and she wanted it every time she looked at him downtrodden, sweaty and dirty. In his twenties she could excuse it as late adolescence, but as he grew up she began to realize that it had sticking power, that nasty helpless look.

Even as his career grew (she still remembered the first time he was recognized on the street with her, the two of them making up voices for birds in a city park) she’d been scared for him. He needed someone to help him, but he was also a caring person, and he needed someone he could help as much as they helped him.

She was glad it was Eddie. She would have been happy with anyone, of course, if they made her son happy, but she was glad it was Eddie. Ever since they were kids she’d known they had something special. It wasn’t romantic back then, of course not, but they made each other's lives better. Even if she didn’t understand everything that had happened in their childhoods she could understand that.

Sometimes, late at night with the ceiling fan whirring above her and the sounds of crickets outside, she wished that Eddie and Richie had met earlier. That they’d bumped into each other in the street and felt that long-lost connection. But it wouldn’t have been the same if it had happened that way. 

They found each other right when they needed each other most, she knew, and she wouldn’t risk that for anything in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done! Except not really because I'm going to make this a series.
> 
> Anyway, I hope y'all like it :)


End file.
